


everyone you love is made of stardust

by somebraveapollo



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Gen, Gift Giving, Pre-Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:38:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1466290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somebraveapollo/pseuds/somebraveapollo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Ginko brings her gifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everyone you love is made of stardust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [egelantier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/egelantier/gifts).



> Happy birthday, my dear, and may the beauty and surrealness never leave us.

_Ginko looked the same as ever. The only thing different was that, while he talked, he held a small bundle, covered up in dark cloth. He did not fidget with it – he always had a kind of languid stillness that Tanyuu enjoyed watching – but nor did he put it away. Tanyuu didn’t ask what the bundle was. He was a great storyteller, he would explain it in time, if it was for her to know._

I was on my way back to you when I saw a shower of stars. I sat down to watch and fell asleep, dreaming of nothing in particular. There was no call of the mushi, no change in the growth of the forest - nothing at all to worry me. But the next night, there was a star-shower again, longer and brighter than before. Two nights in a row are very unlikely, so I followed the direction where the stars landed, sure I would find something of interest.

For seven nights, I followed the falling stars. I heard nothing, but felt a kind of darkness around them, unusual for warm summer evenings. 

On the dawn of the eighth day, I found it, a pitch-dark field unaffected by the rosy sunlight; and on it, pale, silent mushi, shivering a little. They no longer looked like stars. They were dying. I knelt to pick one up – I had never heard of its type before – when a woman’s voice told me to stop.

“You will kill it,” she said. “We have to wait for noon.”

She was thin and short-haired, clad in pale-blue except for her too-large leather gloves. There was a constellation of scars on her left cheek. If she was a mushi-shi, she did not look like a traveller. There was something soft about her, but she spoke with authority.

I rose to greet her and she smiled. “You can stay to watch the harvest,” she said.

I lay in a nearby shade and dozed off. She woke me up when the sun was high and scorchingly bright. I sat and watched her reach out for the mushi – almost transparent in the sun and surrounded by a dull-grey shade. She caught three, and placed them in separate little bottles. One she touched died in her hand, turning into a lightless, soft blob. She buried it gently in the soft soil of the field.

She carried her bottles carefully, and brought me to a large stone-built house, standing isolated in the woods. She smiled when she entered, and we were greeted by another woman. This one wore a dark-blue kimono, and her hair was tied back. She wore and apron and served lunch, asking no questions about my presence.  
I felt like I owed them for their hospitality, so I told them of my job. I must have pleased them, because they smiled, similar somehow although they looked nothing alike.

“We have something to show you,” said the dark-robed woman, and they led me to the back of their house.

“I am a glassworker,” she said, and led me to her forge. There were bottles there of different shapes and hues. It was beautiful, in a practical kind of way – I saw no ornaments, no embellishments. I asked if she sold her wares but she smiled. “I use them for something else.”

She showed me a large and heavy wooden box, with no keyhole. She opened it quickly and I saw bottles stacked neatly together. In each of them, several of the mushi I had seen drifted around – colliding, parting, flickering, and dimming.

The glassworker took out one of the round bottles and she shook it lightly. The mushi blazed, even in the brightness of the afternoon.

“You trap them?” I asked, and for the first time they did not smile.

“They were dying, on that field,” said the woman with the scar on her cheek. “For years, we watched them die and could do nothing.”

“They live from the light that surrounds them,” said the other. “But they’re killed by wind and by shadow, by coldness or too much light.” She put the bottle back and closed the lid. “If we put them together, they can live off each other’s light.”

The first resumed, “It took us a long time to find the kind of glass they can live in, and to learn what number of them can live together. If there are too many in one place, they explode. It there are too few, they extinguish.”  
I nodded. With their permission, I took out a glass sphere and shook it, as they did. The mushi seemed to swirl, seemed to dance. I could not tell if they were suffering, or if they were pleased. Probably neither. But all beings that can choose would prefer to live.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” I asked them. “It is such a big job for two people.”

The short-hair woman hesitated, but the other said, “Yes. We don’t have children, and when we die, there will be nobody to continue our work. If you can, please tell others – others, who don’t have to travel – and maybe somebody will desire to come here and become our apprentice.”

I promised them I would do so – I would have done so anyway.

I also knew I would have to leave soon, because any other mushi would upset the delicate balance they’d created.They fed me again, and when I was already out the door, they told me to wait and brought me a sphere of mushi.

“The glass is very delicate – they suffocate if it’s any thicker,” said the woman in dark blue.

“Don’t shake it too much, we don’t know if they feel pain,” said her wife.

I bowed and accepted my gift. But it is not a good gift for a travelling mushi-shi, and so I hurried my way back to you.

_Tanyuu smiled, and kept smiling as Ginko handed her the bundle. She unwrapped it and her breath caught at the odd beauty of it. She gave the sphere the gentlest of shakes, and it seemed like the night sky had come alive between her palms. “They need a name,” she said, and Ginko exhaled his sweet smoke and smiled back. “We will think of something,” he said._


End file.
